Ribbit Mobile is challenging Google Voice as the trusted receiver, organizer, and transcriber of your phone calls and voicemail. How does it stack up to Google's voicemail services? Aside from a few missing pieces, Ribbit looks like a serious rival.

At a glance, Ribbit Mobile, a currently in-beta, invitation-only VoIP and voicemail service recently bought by British Telecom, looks like a direct value-added challenge to Google's one-number-many-phones service. To a certain extent, it is a true direct competitor in the voicemail and phone-routing service, with a good list of unique features that we'll get to in just a bit.

Ribbit doesn't offer SMS services at the moment, however, and obviously doesn't offer the kind of integration with Google Contacts, Gmail, and a single Google account log-in that Google Voice does. It also lacks person-by-person message rules, allowing you to send certain callers to voicemail and hear a particular greeting,, while letting more important people through and giving them a different greeting. If none of that is particularly important to you, though, Ribbit is ready to take over your voicemail. We got into the free beta of Ribbit's "Pro" service, made a few calls, tested some transcriptions, and took a few screenshots to show off.

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Sign-up and setup

Like Google Voice's voicemail-only service and apps like YouMail, Ribbit doesn't provide you a new number, but uses a call-forwarding feature present on most cellphones, and usually free on most cell carriers, to route your unanswered calls to its servers. Ribbit's sign-up is fairly intuitive and easy. Give it your phone number, and it can guess what code you'll need to type into your phone just once to forward your missed calls to Ribbit. Ribbit will call and text you once to test out the connection, and then you're ready to sign in and set up your phone rules.

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Once you've set up a cellphone, now it's time to add more phones and decide how you want them rung. There's not a lot of advanced If X Then Ring Y rules—just certain phones you want to ring before a call is sent to voicemail, and others you want to ring while a voicemail is being primed and recorded. In some ways, that's more intuitive than how Google Voice wants you to draw an hour-by-hour schematic of when certain phones ring. For the control freaks among us, though, it's probably just a little too simple.

Ribbit can also forward voice calls to Skype numbers, Google Talk, and MSN Messenger. Google Voice can do something similar with Gizmo5 and a little setup tweaking, and sometimes a little cash, but Ribbit's implementation seems easier, and free—at least in this beta period.

On the Ribbit inbox itself: It's a bit rough-looking for our tastes, at least at this early phase. There are no easily-found links to MP3 downloads of messages (even though they're included in your transcription emails). We spotted a few instances of "NaN" ("Not a number," a database quirk often found in alpha/beta software), and the page can be noticeably slow in transitioning between features. For the basic task of getting to your message audio and transcription, though, it basically works.

Unique features

Ribbit makes it a bit more logical to leave yourself a voice memo than the DIY setup route we've shown for Google Voice. Simply call the voicemail number provided by Ribbit, select the voice memo option, and your transcribed note gets pushed out to your Ribbit inbox, your email, and your phone, if you have it set up that way.

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What's really neat is the web-based phone on the Ribbit page that can actually ring if you don't pick up on your cell. If you happen to have a headset nearby, or you don't mind using your computer's microphone and speakers, you can actually pick up a call from Ribbit's web page. That's pretty darned neat. Free VoIP service Gizmo5 offers a similar web-page-pickup function when it's hooked into Google Voice, but Ribbit's web phone sits in a nicely central location.

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Ribbit also touts its "Caller ID 2.0" and contacts management. It's fairly easy to upload a CSV file with all your contacts from Outlook, Apple Mail.app, or even Google. Ribbit can also authorize with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr, and show you updates on those networks from the person who just called when you pull up their message. Seems like a feature only the social hounds would really need, but, hey, it's presumably free.

Transcriptions

Ribbit's beta test is of its "Pro" service, which offers "Business-Grade," human-assisted transcription. It takes a small bit longer than the automated, computer-only transcriptions offered at the lower pricing levels, but does seem to make a difference.

To test out Ribbit's transcriptions, I called myself and left a scripted message twice at Ribbit, once with "Business-Grade" enabled in the transcription settings, and again with "Automated" switched on. I then called my Google Voice number and said the same script. Here's how each service fared:

The message script:

This is a test of Ribbit, the new voicemail service that's basically lining itself up against Google Voice. I find that intriguing, much as I find the eternal war between Pretzel Time and Auntie Anne's intriguing. Seriously, Pretzel Time? Just give it up. The war for the sullen teenager's spare change is pretty much over. That is all.

This is a test of Ribbit. The new voicemail service that's basically lining itself up against Google Voice. I find that intriguing much as I find the eternal war between Pretzel Time and (Angie Ann's?) intriguing. Seriously Pretzel time, just give it up. The war for the song Teenager Spare changes pretty much over, that is all.

This is a test of ribbit new voicemail service has basically letting itself off against google voice I find that intriguing much is icon eternal war between parcel time Angie and intrigued seriously purple time just give it up the more for the cell need your spare changes pretty much over that is all.

This is a test rivet the new voicemail service that basically lining itself up against Google Voice. I found that intriguing much as I find eternal were between couple time in Auntie and intriguing. Seriously. payPal time, just give it up. The more for this on teenagers bear changes pretty much over that is all.

The take-away

Google Voice will probably remain the go-to service for those whose work lives are already heavily meshed into the search giant's email/docs/contacts infrastructure in the cloud. Ribbit, however, is going to force innovation in the "Voicemail 2.0" field, and looks like a worthy service for anyone looking for a better voicemail. It's not free for everything (check out Ribbit's pricing plans), but it has a chance at capturing the phones of those who don't want to change numbers or hook all their data into Google's ever-expanding pile.